Ordoliberalism’s internal contradictions combined economic modernity with antimodern social ideas

Evidence

German neoliberals, insistent on the need to pay strict attention to questions of sociopolitical integration, deserve credit for acknowledging the destructive potential of the market economy. At the same time, this debate reflects a strange mix of steadfast belief in the market on the one hand and of reactionary pessimism with regard to progress and the future on the other. The pure ordoliberal design of a market society was ultimately doomed to fail given these inherent contradictions, which resulted from the combination of economic modernity and antimodern political, social, and cultural ideas. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 506

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The diagnosis of ordoliberalism as an unstable compound — market modernity fused with reactionary pessimism — is a genuinely nuanced, paradigm-shaping reading of the whole project’s trajectory, not a routine point.
• XREF: This tension echoes the broader historiographical debate over whether neoliberalism as a whole is genuinely modernizing or a reactionary ‘counter-Enlightenment’ project — a question central to the reader’s foundational study. — connects to: Ordoliberals condemned consumerism as a marker of mass society — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 213; Both Schumpeter and ordoliberals rejected Marx’s internal-contradiction thesis of capitalism — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 947; Ordoliberal enterprise society is simultaneously for and against the market — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1268 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordoliberalism’s founding critique of capitalism was culturally conservative and antimodernist #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 509
• German ordoliberalism combined a strong-state Ordnungspolitik with sociocultural individualism and postwar integrationism #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 515